her past life to see what fruits it would produce, and found none. Now she perceives the cause, and now she embraces the remedy. But, Oh! the poverty of these moments-the bitter retrospect of wasted years-the burthen of accumulated sin-the inveteracy of habit, returning in spite of every effort to eradicate it. The chains of the world are broken indeed, but they hang clattering about the neck with scarcely diminished weight. Folly takes advantage of its intimacy to gain access to the bosom, and wins with the accents of our native tongue. After a life of thoughtlessness, how difficult to think-how difficult to feel, after the feelings have been blunted and expended-to act, after a life of indolence. Not only can the past years never be recovered, but many a one to come will be expended in painful contention between inveterate habit and determined principle, in joyless and vacillating faith, unsanctified and inconsistent conduct. Such is not the harvest a pious mother desires for her child.

A few things I would say to my correspondent before we part, in affectionate desire for her welfare. She shrinks from

every plan of education because of its imperfection. Here is a system that has no imperfections-Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." I know of no “safeguard from the wish to err." On the contrary, I know that the whole tendency of the heart of man is to evil, from his birthtime to his dying hour, that he can be turned from it only by supernal power; and if by wilfully exposing himself to temptation he provokes the withdrawment of that power, he will return to evil as to his own element. I know of no nature of ours which it is our duty to exalt and refine though I have heard of one we are to mortify and put to death. With respect to "stretching nature on the cross of Christ," I do not know whose the expression is, and I am not sure that I know what it means. But there is another that sounds something like it-this I understand "The world is crucified to me, and I

unto the world." The religion of Jesus requ jection of all earthly and selfish preference, formity of every feeling and faculty to his service.

SERIES OF ESSAYS ON THE SU

ARCHITECTURE.

ESSAY THE ELEVENTH.

Pedestal-Bases-Arch-Definition

A PART of Architecture we have not y is the Pedestal. No determined rule ha lished respecting it. It has been conside an auxiliary, to give height, and elevat above surrounding objects which might imp and therefore varying in height according stances that make it necessary. When us it is common to give it one third or on height of the Column and Entablature. Plate 11, Fig. 1, consists of the Plynth, Die, and the Cornice. The Die of the P be equal in size to the Plynth of the Co columns are in couples, if Pedestals are but one; also in a Colonnade or Peristyl be but one Pedestal continued, having br tions in the Cornices, so that each column have its particular Pedestal.

The Column of each Order has its p which may be thus distinguished.

The Tuscan Base, Fig. 2, has only Plynth.

The Doric, Fig. 3, has, beside the Tor an Astragal.

The Ionic, Fig. 4, has a larger Tor Scotia, with two Astragals between.

The Corinthian, Fig. 5, has two Tori, two Scotia, and two Astragals.

The Composite, Fig. 6, has one Astragal less than the Corinthian.

What is called the Attic Base, Fig. 7, which is applied to any of the Orders except the Tuscan, consists of two Tori and a Scotia, and admits of other varieties.

There has been much speculation in Architectural writings, respecting the introduction of the Arch in building: but it appears sufficiently certain that the manner of constructing it was unknown to the ancients, and to the Greeks in the time of their greatest excellence in the art. No specimen is to be met with before the age of Alexander, either in the remains of their buildings, or the descriptions of writers who lived before that period. The time of the discovery is not ascertained, but it is thought likely to have been known to the Greeks about the time of the Macedonian conqueror, and to have been learned by them in the East. Previously to this, when height was indispensable, it was obtained from the earliest times by the gradual approximation of stones placed horizontally over each other, projecting so as finally to meet.

A definition of the term Order as used in Architecture, seems to have presented some difficulty. It is apparent that the Column and its Entablature are all that is necessary to produce a Composition-whence an old writer has remarked, "If we would define the term Order exactly, and give the most express meaning of it, we must, as it were, make a very anatomy of the parts, and say that the Column, with its Base and Capital, crowned with an Architrave, Frieze, and Cornice, forms that kind of building which men call an Order; seeing all these individual parts do generally encounter, and are found through all the Orders; the difference amongst them consisting in no other particular, than in the proportion of these parts, and the figure of their Capitals. They have indeed some peculiar ornaments, as Trig

VOL. IX.

G g